Sometimes the fight against illicit drugs seems to take one step forward, two steps backward. But we have to take inspiration from tragic consequences to work even harder.
The U.S. Senate just passed a resolution I co-sponsored designating National Youth Synthetic Drug Awareness Week.
Congress and law enforcement work to get synthetic drugs off the streets but cynical manufacturers work all the time to put out new varieties. Public awareness is a large part of prevention. A product sold in a store or online isn’t necessarily safe and might be far from it.
We all learned that terrible lesson in 2010, when 18-year-old David Rozga of Indianola died after using a product called K2. He and his friends bought the drug from a local store.
That led to my enacted legislation to ban K2 and legislation from other senators to ban other iterations of synthetic drugs that appeared in their states. Unfortunately, new compounds come on the market all the time, faster than Congress can legislate.
As a result, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) must ban the new compounds using its administrative authority. Included among these drugs is a compound called “5F-PB-22,” which was blamed for the deaths of three young Iowans last year. 5F-PB-22 is officially banned, or scheduled, under DEA procedures. The final rule went into effect last month.
The National Youth Synthetic Drug Awareness Week resolution names David Rozga. It’s important to the Rozga family that other families learn from their tragedy. In his memory, and in that of the three young Iowans who died from synthetic drugs in 2013, and others who have been harmed, all of us who work to prevent illicit drug use must redouble our efforts.